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The Sudanese Mahdi: Frontier Fundmentalist Author(S): John Voll Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol The Sudanese Mahdi: Frontier Fundmentalist Author(s): John Voll Source: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2 (May, 1979), pp. 145-166 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/162124 Accessed: 07/11/2010 21:37 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. 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Middle East Stud. 10 (I979), I45-I66 Printed in Great Britain '45 John Voll THE SUDANESE MAHDI: FRONTIER FUNDMENTALIST The Sudanese Mahdi has been pictured as a villain, as a hero, as a reactionary, as an anti-imperialist revolutionary, and in many other ways. The romance and excitement of the nineteenth-century Mahdiyya has inspired novels and movies, while the many faceted reality of the movement has caught the attention of a wide range of scholars in search of case studies of specific phenomena. In recent years the Mahdi has been used as an example of a 'charismatic' leader,1 the founder of a religiopolitical party in the 'third world,'2 the leader of a millen- arian revolt,3 an African rebel against alien rule,4 and a Semitic messiah in an African context. Many of these analyses are the constructive products of the changing situation in the world of contemporary historical studies. Each tends to reflect a broader analytical concern aroused by modern developments. It has become necessary to reexamine the significance of many movements in light of recent events. This has become an activity of special import. Geoffrey Barraclough has suggested a reason for this: 'Today it is evident that much we have been taught to regard as central is really peripheral and much that is usually brushed aside as peripheral had in it the seeds of the future. Looked at from the vantage-point of Dien Bien Phu, for example, Amritsar stands out with new and unaccustomed prominence among the events of I9I9.'5 One can say with equal validity that viewed from the vantage point of the revival of Muslim self-confidence, the visibility of a leader like Qaddafi in Libya, and the importance of the Wahhabi monarchy in the modern world, it is with a renewed interest that we look at the fundamentalist reformers in the Islamic tradition. These reformers certainly can no longer be seen as the last 1 Richard H. Dekmejian and Margaret J. Wyszomirski, 'Charismatic Leadership in Islam: The Mahdi of the Sudan,' Comparative Studies in Society and History, 14 (1972), I93-214. 2 Donald Eugene Smith, Religion, Politics, and Social Change in the Third World (New York: The Free Press, 1971), pp. I55-161. 3 Guenter Lewy, Religion and Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, I974), pp. 176-I93. 4 These last two refer to L. Carl Brown, 'The Sudanese Mahdiya,' in Robert I. Rotberg and Ali A. Mazrui, eds., Protest and Power in Black Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, I970), pp. 145-168. The editors put the chapter in the section entitled 'Rebellions against Alien Rule,' but L. Carl Brown presents the Mahdi in the broader context of Semitic messianism. 5 Geoffrey Barraclough, An Introduction to ContemporaryHistory (Baltimore: Penguin Books, I964), p. 35. 0020-7438/79/0200-0201 $o0.50 ? 1979 Cambridge University Press I46 John Voll gasp of a dying civilization in light of the current vigor of the fundamentalist viewpoint in at least some areas of Islam. To some extent this may be a source for the continuing interest in the Sudan- ese Mahdi. He has often been mentioned in discussions of Islamic fundamental- ism, or has been described as a puritanical reformer.6 His actual place in the fundamentalist part of the Islamic experience, however, has not been fully explored. L. C. Brown's discussion of his position as a Semitic messiah-reformer in the context of African Islam is perhaps the most thorough exploration of this aspect of the life and work of Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi.7 The resurgence of Islamic activism in recent years gives added importance to efforts to understand the fundamentalist tradition in Islam. An analysis of the Sudanese Mahdiyya and its place in that tradition can provide insight into both the dynamics of the Mahdiyya itself and some aspects of Islamic fundamentalism. This requires that the Mahdiyya be examined in the broader context of the whole Islamic experience. Many scholars have made efforts at this but have produced a kind of paradox. While most writers see Muhammad Ahmad as a puritanical reformer, many use the title 'al-Mahdi' as the starting point for their analysis of his place in Islamic history. In this way, rather than starting with or discussing the long-standing tradition of fundamentalism, they start with and describe the Shi'a concept of the Mahdi.8 This Shi'a context points the analysis away from Islamic fundamentalism which usually was opposed to Shi'a tendencies. As a result, some authors have found themselves involved in a search for Shi'a elements in Sudanese Islam and finding in them an explanation for the Mahdi's teachings.9 However, it is clear that the distinction between the Sunni and Shi'a concepts of the Mahdi must be kept in mind in analyzing the Sudanese Mahdiyya and that the concept utilized there was clearly within the Sunni and not the Shi'a tradition.10 This analysis involves three interlocking assumptions which must be clarified in applying it to the Sudanese Mahdiyya. First, it assumes that there is such an 6 See, for example, Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Ventureof Islam (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, I974), III, 247; Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 58-59; Mandour El Mahdi, A Short History of the Sudan (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 96-97. 7 Brown, 'The SudaneseMahdiya.' 8 In this way, in a general survey of modern Middle Eastern history, the Sudanese Mahdi is given as an example of the Shi'a mahdist concept. See William Spencer, PoliticalEvolution in the MiddleEast (Philadelphia: Lippincott, I962), p. I7. 9 This is especially true of some of the older Western descriptionsof the Mahdi. See F. R. Wingate, Mahdiismand the EgyptianSudan (2d ed.; London: Cass, I968), pp. 5-6; Richard A. Bermann, The Mahdi of Allah (New York: Macmillan, I932), PP. 73-74: D. S. Margoliouth, 'Mahdi,' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, VIII, 339. More recently this approach was followed to some extent in Soad el Fatih, 'The Teach- ings of Muhammad Ahmad the Sudanese Mahdi' (unpublished M.A. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1961). 10See, for example, the conclusions drawn in P. M. Holt, The Mahdist State in the Sudan, 1881-1898 (2d ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, I970), p. 3I, and Brown, 'The Sudanese Mahdiya,' pp. 145-147. The Sudanese Mahdi: Frontier Fundamentalist 147 analytical entity as the 'Islamic fundamentalist tradition.' Second, it asserts that at least one kind of mahdism fits within the framework of that tradition, and finally, that Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahdi in the Sudan was 'that kind of Mahdi.' THE FUNDAMENTALIST TRADITION A useful way of characterizing the fundamentalist tradition in Islam is to observe its relationship to a series of creative tensions that are basic within the Islamic experience. For analysis here three pairs of alternatives provide the end- points of three spectra of Islamic experience, and the parameters for these creative tensions. They are the tensions and alternatives of immanence-trans- cendence, diversity-unity, and openness-authenticity. For analytical purposes these pairs will not be treated as exclusive alternatives. They represent, rather, differing emphases in belief, experience, and action. At no time is either alternative totally absent from the experience of a particular Islamic group or society. It is possible, though, to describe any movement within the Islamic experience in terms of which alternatives it is closer to. One of the major dynamics of Islamic history is that as the general public consensus would move in one direction in any of the spectra defined by the pairs, there would arise a reaction which would attempt to reestablish a balance along the midpoint of the spectrum or even try to move society to the other alternative extreme. Thus, in identifying a sentiment, movement, or development in terms of these pairs, it is useful not only to place it on the defined spectrum, but also to note which way the group is trying to move society along that spectrum. It is in this way that it is proposed to define the meaning of the fundamentalist tradition within Islam.
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